Encyclopedia of

Truman Capote Biography

Truman Capote is one of the most famous and controversial writers in
contemporary American literature. He is best known for
In Cold Blood,
a nonfiction novel about the murder of an American family. Because of his
style and themes, reviewers of his early fiction categorized him as a
Southern Gothic writer (a style of fiction that uses gloomy settings and
has mysterious events). Other works, however, display a humorous and
sentimental tone.

The young man

Truman Streckfus Persons was born on September 24, 1924, in New Orleans,
Louisiana. His parents, Archulus Persons and Lillie Mae Faulk, were
divorced when he was four years old. He lived with relatives in
Monroeville, Alabama, while his mother and her second husband, Cuban
businessman Joseph Capote, lived in New York.

His closest friends at this time were an elderly cousin, Miss Sook
Faulk, and a neighboring tomboy, Harper Lee (1926–). She later
became an award-winning author herself, writing
To Kill a Mockingbird.
Both friends appear as characters in Capote's early fiction.

When Truman was nine years old, his mother brought her son to live in
Manhattan, New York. He then took on his adopted last name, Capote. He
continued to spend summers in the South. He did poorly in school, even
though psychological tests proved that his Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
was above genius level. Truman developed an outgoing personality to hide
his loneliness and unhappiness.

Early writing

Truman began secretly writing at an early age. When he completed high
school,
he worked for
The New Yorker.
There he wrote articles and short stories. He also made important
social contacts and later became a frequent guest on television talk
shows. When he was seventeen, several magazines published his short
stories. That exposure eventually led to a contract to write his first
book,
Other Voices, Other Rooms.
Set in the South, the novel centers on a young man's search for
his father and his loss of innocence as he passes into manhood. Many
critics and readers believed that the novel was autobiographical (a
story about himself).

Many of Capote's early stories were written when he was in his
teens and early twenties. Collected in
A Tree of Night and Other Stories,
these stories show the influence of Gothic writers such as Edgar Allan
Poe (1809–1849), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804– 1864), and
William Faulkner (1897–1962). Many of the stories are filled with
bizarre incidents and characters suffering from mental and physical
disorders. Yet some of the tales have a humorous tone. Critics often
place his early fiction into two categories: light stories or bizarre
stories. In later years Capote commented that many of those stories
reflected the anxiety and feelings of insecurity he experienced as a
child.

Mid-career writing

In some of Capote's works of the 1950s, his attention is turned
away from traditional fiction. In
Local Color
he wrote a collection of pieces retelling his impressions and
experiences while in Europe. In
The Muses Are Heard: An Account
he wrote essays about his travels in Russia with a touring theater
company that presented the play
Porgy and Bess.

Before Capote found his main subject, he published one more traditional
novel,
Breakfast at Tiffany's.
It was an engaging story of Manhattan playgirl Holly Golightly. In 1952
the novel was adapted as a Broadway drama. Critics believe
Breakfast at Tiffany's
is a good example of a maturity lacking in Capote's early
fiction. Though Capote conceived his story as fiction, he was already
drawing heavily from real life incidents. Capote saw the second phase of
his development as a writer come to a close with
Breakfast at Tiffany's.
He turned his efforts toward writing as an art form.

From these projects Capote developed the idea of creating work that
would combine fact and fiction. The result was
In Cold
Blood.
Originally, chapters of the book appeared in several issues of
The New Yorker
and the work was later published in book form. This book describes the
murder of Kansas farmer Herbert W. Clutter and his family in November
1959. Capote and Harper Lee, his childhood friend, went to Holcomb,
Kansas, to research the case. The town residents were not only
emotionally shocked and upset about the murders, but they were also
deeply suspicious of Capote and his motives. He retraced the
killers' flight to Miami, Florida, and Acapulco, Mexico. He did
months of research on the criminal mind and interviewed a number of
death row killers. Before he began writing, Capote had gathered over six
thousand pages of notes. All told, the project, which Capote regarded as
the third phase of his writing development, took almost six years.
In Cold Blood,
published in 1965, became a bestseller. Capote received an Edgar Award
from the Mystery Writers of America.

In the late 1960s Capote began suffering from writer's block. He
spent most of his time revising or throwing out his works in progress.
During the mid-1970s he published several chapters of
Answered Prayers
in
Esquire
magazine. It was a gossip-filled chronicle of society's jet set
(an international group of wealthy people who lead expensive, social
lives). The stories revealed intimate details about his society friends.
Most critics found the chapters disappointing. His friends felt betrayed
and refused to have contact with him.

Television personality and later years

During his youth, Capote developed a flashy and humorous style. He often
became a frequent guest on television shows. He admitted that he was
obsessed with fame. He constantly sought social privilege and public
celebrity, objectives he achieved back in 1948 with the appearance of
his first novel,
Other Voices, Other Rooms.
Throughout his life Capote made friends with the rich and famous,
observing their weaknesses with a watchful eye and developing trust and
close friendships he would later betray.

Final years and career assessment

In 1983,
Music for Chameleons,
a final collection of short prose pieces, was published. Capote
approached his writing by setting himself at "center
stage." It included using dialogue, stage direction, narrative,
and a variety of literary techniques. Critics gave less than warm
reviews of
Music for Chameleons.

Afterward, Capote took to alcohol, drug addiction, and suffered poor
health. He died in Los Angeles, California, on August 24, 1984, shortly
before his sixtieth birthday. According to his friends and editors, the
only portions of
Answered Prayers
he had managed to complete were those that had appeared in
Esquire
several years before.

Critical assessment of Capote's career is highly divided, both in
terms of individual works and his overall contribution to literature.
Though the nonfiction novel was his most original contribution to the
literary world, Capote also produced short stories, plays, straight
reportage, television adaptations from books or plays, and film scripts.
His main faults were overwriting and creating strange plots. Most praise
his storytelling abilities and the quality of his prose.

User Contributions:

A very sensitive soul that fought to be recognized without shame. I think his friends were wrong for judging him . After all he did not use their names. He was affected by them because he cared, and wrote about thier lives as a writer does subcosciously.

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